Why it works: Coffee and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,239 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Home Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Thoroughly scald the coffee pot.
Mix the ground coffee and egg white in the pot.
Pour in the boiling water.
Brew and serve
Shut the lid and plug the spout with paper.
Boil for 5 minutes.
Add ½ cup cold water just before serving.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
-
Coffee + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,239 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Ground coffee
- Provides the coffee flavor and aroma that the hot water extracts.
- Egg white
- Helps clarify the brew by binding fine grounds so they settle out of the liquid.
The step that matters
Boil for 5 minutes. Boiling extracts flavor from the coffee, but boiling too long can over-extract it and make it bitter. The egg white needs this heat and time to bind the fine grounds so they settle.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
You might also like
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipes
Egg Coffee20 recipes
Coffee Milk12 recipes
Postum Coffee9 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.